She made a step towards him, and then hesitated. She had to form a plan of campaign all in a moment! She had to keep her wits and to use them! How could she give him confidence about his absurd picture? She noticed that naïve look that sometimes came into his eyes, a boyish expression that gave the He to his greying beard and his generous proportions. He laughed, until, as she came closer, he saw the tears on her eyelids. Then he ceased laughing. She fingered the edge of his coat, cajolingly. "It's a beautiful picture!" she repeated again and again. "And if you like I will see if I can sell it for you. But, Henry----" "Well?" "Please, please don't bother about money. We shall have _heaps_. There's no occasion for you to bother, and I won't _have_ you bothering." "What are you crying for?" he asked in a murmur. "It's only--only because I think it's so nice of you trying to earn money like that," she lied. "I'm not really crying." And she ran away, downstairs, really crying. It was excessively comic, but he had better not follow her, lest he might cry too.... _A Patron of the Arts_ A lull followed this crisis in the affairs of No. 29 Werter Road. Priam went on painting, and there was now no need for secrecy about it. But his painting was not made a subject of conversation. Both of them hesitated to touch it, she from tact, and he because her views on the art seemed to him to be lacking in subtlety. In every marriage there is a topic--there are usually several--which the husband will never broach to the wife, out of respect for his respect for her. Priam scarcely guessed that Alice imagined him to be on the way to lunacy. He thought she merely thought him queer, as artists _are_ queer to non-artists. And he was accustomed to that; Henry Leek had always thought him queer. As for Alice's incredulous attitude towards the revelation of his identity, he did not mentally accuse her of treating him as either a liar or a madman. On reflection he persuaded himself that she regarded the story as a bad joke, as one of his impulsive, capricious essays in the absurd.